Re: Modem

Sod the comms, the Octonauts' most impressive kit is their power generation and energetic projection technology. Fine, you could imagine a shaped force field projector, mounted in a vehicle, providing the underwater equivalent of a windscreen, but they fit the same device into one side of their collar for use as a diving helmet with one of these physics defying radios in the other lapel and all without so much as a triple A battery in sight

Re: Brings back memories

"The guy was fired for that? "

He used his privileges to set up a facility which was specifically banned by the company he worked for. That is very dodgy ground even on the limited information given in the original post. There may be additional circumstances such as lost business due to lack of the email service. Round my way such an arrangement would result in many, many breaches of the data protection act. All of which would probably justify a short, sharp trip across the car park.

Re: @AC 11 Jul 2013 10:45

"I wouldn't recommend cloudy service to *anyone*." The use of the word "anyone" in this context is an absolute which might lead a reader to believe your opinion is that nobody should use cloud services.

"Blanket statements are usually wrong." The use of the word "usually" in this context allows for an alternative outcome which might lead a reader to believe that blanket statements are sometimes right - not ironic at all.

Also, opinions can be wrong. Someone may hold the opinion that I am typing this whilst drowning in jam - they would be wrong. You seem to hold the opinion that the phrase "Blanket statements are usually wrong." is ironic - it isn't.

Re: Them were the days..

Also back in the nineties I worked for a company with, amongst many other things, a machine test lab. The company was in the phase where it was getting sensible to put a PC on everyone's desk. Bearing in mind it was about 1998 and so uptake of internet access was still very far from universal and even the presence of an actual computer in the home wasn't a foregone conclusion.

The lab guys had their own little world in which they lived and the only computer they had regular access to was an Apple 2 which ran one of the test machines. Even then all they did was run the same control program routine.

Apparently they had no experience of other types of computer, which became evident one day when I was doing my compulsory helpdesk stint. They'd had their new Compaq delivered but not installed and were fed up stepping over the boxes so they attempted to set it up on a table themselves. They said they were happy with the job they'd done expect that they weren't sure where the foot pedal should go.

Obviously I was momentarily struck dumb, but after some questioning it became apparent that they did not know what a mouse was and thought it was some device analogous to the foot switch on a sewing machine.

Re: The new "Nintendo Effect"....

Why not? It worked in Formula 1 with all this KERS bollocks - I'm just amazed they didn't make them drive over some kind of 'superturbopower' icon painted on the track. What used to be a steering wheel now looks more like a dual shock controller - the playstation generation is established and inflicting their ideas on us right now!

Re: Last time I checked

Re: What really bugs me

"Can't they just shove a CCTV camera somewhere that can see the Embassy and leave it at that?"

Fail within a fail. Two coppers hanging around the embassy are replaced by a camera - who is going to deal with the output from this camera??

That's right, a copper (or other payed employee) which negates any savings and, wow, another copper who is required to be very near the embassy anyway in case Assange makes his move.

That's just the most favourable outcome of your 'suggestion'. In order to have favourable odds of capturing him, they'd probably want two police ready in addition to whoever watches the camera screen. Which is, of course, more expensive.

And of course you are assuming that the Met have access to a suitable location for the camera - as they probably haven't they would probably have to pay for that facilitly too. And as you're not very good at thinking these things through I'll point out that if they site the camera in a police vehicle near the door there is no advantage over their current on-site watch - unless they trust a single officer to watch the screen and not get distracted at all over their entire shift.

Or perhaps you think they could just skim a recording later? Could make for an interesting maths question in one of Mr. Gove's new o-levels - if Julian Assange escapes an embassy at half past eleven at night at an average speed of 15 miles an hour, how far away could he be by the time PC Bob Smith finds out at nine o'clock the next day? Show your working out.

Re: What happens when....

There's a lot to be said for the attitude I've seen amongst continental Europeans whereby if you have been, say, a waiter for many years, people are happy to think you obviously work merely to cover your life costs and have interests elsewhere. If you want to be judged by your job, then that's fine too but it isn't for everyone.

It takes all sorts to make a world, very few people can be a billionaire rockstar astronaut and some people actively don't wish to be one.

Re: Gravitational lensing

Would it not be much, much larger than star-sized? The useful surface of such a structure would probably have to be built at a distance equivalent to the orbital path of a planet in the "goldilocks" zone.

It wouldn't be worth visiting any stars for a vast distance around such a structure as any resource bearing planets would probably have been stripped bare to supply the incredible demand for buildng materials.

I don't know if I'm a fan of the Dyson sphere/shell idea. It seems to me that if a civilisation can build such a thing, then they probably have energy requirements beyond the ability of a single captured star to repay.

If they did require such a thing, then they probably have radiation manipulating capabilities to reduce the observable footprint of the structure and so stop it advertising itself as a target. Or perhaps it doesn't matter as anything of that size made out of a substance which can support its own mass would surely be largely invulnerable to harm.

Re: Straight up and out in 10 minutes??

There's always a balance to be head. Consider the water in your taps; it has already gone through all the energy consuming processes of storing, cleaning and pumping it back for delivery. If it is there right behind the valve in the tap, surely it is just as wasteful not to use some as it is to use it to excess?!

Re: Straight up and out in 10 minutes??

Though I'm in favour of everyone playing their small part, ultimately it won't make a difference to your utility bill. Now matter how little we use, the utility companies keep putting the bills up to retain their profit levels, er, cover increased costs I mean..

Re: Actually

Surely your company should suffer the consequences of under-equipping employees, not the other way around. They will almost certainly loose 200 quids worth of productivity from you with a crap laptop, but how would you see that £200 of your own expenditure back if you bought yourself a better one and used it for their benefit?

Re: I did not cost the council one penny

You would use the Data Protection Act to find out specific information about yourself - it is called a subject access request.

The Freedom Of Information Act is for more general, non-personal requests unless it is of an environmental nature in which case it is much the same process as FOI but under the guidance of the Environmental Information Regulations

For some reason whenever I think of fantasy authors/artists I can only ever picture a very short, very bald, hugely obese man in a hawaiian shirt sporting a streak of beard which only serves to mark the otherwise indefinable point where his face ends and his gut begins

Re: Pole Position go the same way:

I vaguely recall some game which involved taking into account spinning round what might have been a black hole. I seem to think that if you took your mind off that task long enough to think about shooting your opponent, you instantly died.

I think I had to wait for Outrun and Roadblasters before I trusted driving games of that display perspective again.

For overhead ones like Spyhunter was, I don't think I ever found anything better than APB. Still love that game. Maybe Antique Code Show can take that one up some time?

Re: British Intelligence

I always thought it was pronounced 'jif', but I learned I was labouring under a misunderstanding as I was first told it stood for 'General Image Format', so it made sense to me to pronounce the G as J (i.e. Jeneral, not General)

Re: Rockall Times

The shenanigans following that escape are still hidden on the web, accessible by a bit of googling. I must admit from the tone of those conversations I'm surprised to see this article. I suppose what happens on Rockall, stays on Rockall. I do wonder what happened to 'exciteable office girl Jemma' though, I rather like the sound of her!

The SAP licence site

is the worst thing I have ever used. I used to be a Business Objects admin a few years ago and when it came to re-licensing the installed products each year, well, I think it would be quicker to be beaten to death with a balloon on the end of a stick.

Their descriptions of the various bits of Business Objects didn't match those in the software, the number of licences they had on record was always different to the number we had bought, almost every new page demanded you sign in again and if you happened to stumble on a likely looking combo, the licence key was generated by a member of staff who emailed it to you - so what was the point in the website? Why couldn't I just contact the staff directly? SAP don't allow you to do that unless there is a technical issue or complaint. The site being unfit for purpose isn't viewed as a technical issue.

The one time they did try and help me, they told me our product combination was impossible and so it couldn't be licensed - despite the fact it was unchanged from the previous year and they were able to do so then! In many ways I miss Business Objects, but I don't miss SAP!

Re: The largely unsuccessful - but rather good - Star Trek: The Motion Picture

That always jarred me about the criticism of Star Trek The Motion Picture. 2001is credited for its lengthy, majestic space scenes with classical music score. Star Trek The Motion Picture is deplored for its lengthy, majestic space scenes with classical music score.

A previous poster was right in that it could have done with being shorter - half an hour would have been fine, but then I think that about 2001 as well.

As for 'The Motion Picture' in the title, judge it by the eyes of the audience of the time who were not so used to the 'successful TV show jumps straight to film' formula.

Re: well hold on there pardner...

Re: well hold on there pardner...

Glad you find it to be better than expected. However I think your examples are, if anything, illustrating the point that many people put forward - namely that 'Metro' is an unnecessary step in the proceedings on a non-touchscreen computer.

Win+r works on my XP machine, cmd has given me a command prompt since NT4 days and I'm not sure how those examples are relevant as they aren't Windows 8 features. Neither is the easy location of and handling of documents - that's a bread and butter task for any OS. You didn't need two user interfaces to accomplish those tasks.

Any of those things work fine on a 11 year old operating system (XP) and, if you drop the requirement to press Win+r and allow 'command' instead of 'cmd', you can get the same results from Win 95. (For all I know, Win+r might work there too)

Re: It all depends on the water!

Re: It all depends on the water!

Re: It needed extra stuff on Amiga too

Later memory expansions had more than just 512K on board. An Amiga 500+ is supposed to have 1MB (but Commodore didn't always agree..!) so with one of the later expansions that would be (barely) enough. But the 500+ was just a warmed over version of the 1987 original - SC2000 was released in 1994, so expecting a fundamentally 7 year old design to keep up is asking a bit much. Commodore did have the solution though - it was called the Amiga 1200 (or the 3000 or 4000 if you had money to burn)

I also played this perfectly well on my 486 DX4 100, but it did also have a Vesa Local Bus graphics card with a whole 256KB of dedicated memory. A mate of mine ran it on a 486 DX66 but with a better S3 Virge card to make up for it. The game itself ran the same, the difference was in the scrolling speed as your moved around the map.

I sunk so much enjoyable time into SC2000. I've been known to play it long after 'the day', but not done so for a while.

I noticed the comments about hydro power earlier - they are excellent at first as they are available fairly early on but the difference between them and any other power station is that they don't need renewing. Build a hydro and it lasts forever. However you do need a lot of them and they are quickly outclassed in cost efficiency by the later power tech.

I also saw something about not hitting the 120K population for arcologies. Unfortunately in that regard you are rewarded by having the least interesting city - stick to absolutely nothing but completely flat land with a wall to wall grid of roads at 90 degree angles which mark out 6x6 spaces for your zones. That gives maximum density for the most part of the game while you building population and money. Once the 8x8 arcos are available they don't fit the grid well, but they don't have to as it has already done its job of getting you to the endgame.

I rather enjoyed the use of the newspaper as a means of communication by the game. A lot of the Miss Sim stories were quite amusing - I remember the one where someone wrote in and said they were worried by a dream they had where nothing was real and they were just living in a computer game..!

Re: Older Couple

I didn't say they would lack imagination of any kind, just that they might be less inclined as a group to play zero g football with their lunch. Military/academic life encourages a disciplined outlook which ought to make for safer capsule inhabitants than sitting any other random bugger in the driving couch

Re: Radiation roulette with the goolies?

Ah, the first fuckwit raises their head. At what point do you expect the a male human to be beyond child-bearing age? Downvote for a gaping hole in your supposed intellect? Wouldn't bother as I hate the upvote/downvote system

I admit I am assuming the couple will either be a male and a female, or two males. Men can remove themselves from the gene pool at any time up to death and are therefore candidates for a Darwin Award for life unless they remove or disable their nads.